Hi, my name is Ben Oliver. I’m 15 and i live in Oxnard and Ventura, CA. Last year during Spring Break, I was lucky enough to have a really awesome experience. My step dad has this thing called a pop-up camper, which is basically just a really elaborate tent , on the back of his truck that we hadn't used on a big trip in a while, so my mom, my step dad, my brother (Ethan), and I thought it would be cool to go to Mexico (it would be Ethan and my first REAL time going there). So we made plans with our close friends Tom and Amy (and their kids, Mac and Windy). But the whole beauty of the trip is that we didn't really HAVE any plans, pretty much all we knew for certain was that we were going to Baja for a week. So once we had the trip all, thought out, we stocked up on food, and everything else we wanted to bring, and headed to the border! It took about 3 to 4 hours to get there, and I would describe the ride up there if I hadn't of fallen asleep. Anyway when we got to the border, we were all tired and hungry, luckily we had some leftover burritos from Corrales. After my mom realized it wasn't that good of an idea to be reading her book off of her iPad, we met up with Tom, Amy, Mac, and Windy (I forgot to mention earlier, they have a camper too, and Tom and Amy, along with my step dad, Suni, had been to Baja many times before). We were really excited to see them, but like I said, we were all very tired. But unfortunately, we still had about 5 hours of driving before we arrived to our destination.
I remember driving through and out of Tijuana. It wasn't really that exciting inside of the city, but when we started getting towards the outer edges we saw some really cool things. Like Oceans, and beaches made of rocks that looked like black shining stones with the sunset. We also saw some huge buildings that looked like they would be really nice, but they were never finished. Then, once we got into the middle of nowhere, things really started to get cool. there were Joshua Trees, and Cacti, and plants that looked like something straight from a Dr. Seuss book. Despite all the awesomeness, I dozed off again. I don’t know what time it was when i woke up, but it was really dark. We ended up bunkering down at this little hotel in El Rosario. Despite the size, it was actually really nice. In fact, was by far the nicest hotel we would come across on that entire trip. When we got to our room, it had nice tile floors, two beds, a tv, and a bathroom with a pretty nice shower. Then we met up with the Lands (Tom, Amy, Mac, and Windy), and decided we were hungry. So we waited for the adults to unpack everything, while Windy, Mac, Ethan and I all hung out in our hotel room. It’s like a tradition of mine whenever I go to a hotel to break in the bed and TV first thing. But when I turned on the TV all we could find were Mexican soap operas. Eventually we found the only american channels they had, which were Disney channel and Nickelodeon. It was pretty amusing to watch “The Princess and the Frog” in Spanish. Then we headed down to a nearby Taqueria, which are little taco stands that they have everywhere in Mexico. When we were walking, there were many barking dogs that looked pretty big and viscous that weren't on leashes, but they kept their distance. Then we got to the taco stand. I can’t even begin to describe to you how good those 5 tacos tasted to me that night, so i’m not even going to try. I don’t know if it was because I was so hungry, or what, But that was literally one of the best experiences (taste wise) in my life.
This is a Joshua Tree next to some boulders. We saw a lot of this out there
At this point, I realized that if I try to paint a visual image of our whole trip to you in this paper, it’s going to be a whole book, so i’ll kind of sum it up, and only include the best parts. One thing that was really awesome on that trip was how nice the majority of the people there were. Like when we went to this one tiny little village called San Jose De Gracia, that was totally secluded from the outside world, most of the people who lived there had only been to the nearest town like twice, and we wouldn't even have considered that “town” a “town”. When we got there there was this guy singing, and there was no festival or anything, and for a second Tom stopped to see what was going on, and the guy just looked at him, smiled, kept singing, and encouraged him to join in. And when we got out, all the children surrounded us, and gave us a bag of fresh dates, and tried to talk and play with us even though they spoke only Spanish and were just fascinated with us, and were happy that we were there. But Tom and Amy had an old friend that lived there that they hadn’t seen in like 15 years or something, and as soon as he saw us he started smiling and greeting us and hugging Tom and Amy, and when he came to meet us (the kids) you could tell he really wanted to get to know us, he wasn’t just being polite. Then he invited us in and sat us down at this table made out of some type of straw and told us to wait there. Then he, and his family literally prepared a full on banquet of food for us, and keep in mind, these are probably some of the poorest people on earth, and all this stuff they were giving us was the very best they had. Their water source was literally a stream running down a mountain behind their village. their houses were made out of plastic, bamboo-like straw and anything else they could find. And all they wanted to do to us was give. Some of the most amazing people I have ever met. Oh and, get this, our friend who made us the meal, i thought he was maybe in his early to mid thirties, he was fifty-two. That’s how everyone looked there.
But probably the most memorable part of the trip was yet to come. One of the whole points of us going on this trip, was to go to this bay we had heard lots about called San Ignacio. This bay was unlike any other, I think, in the world. Well, i guess it’s not my opinion, it IS unlike any other bay in the world. The reason being that, for some strange reason, the gray whales that migrate through that area, will swim up to your boat and let you touch them. We saw some videos of it on YouTube, and it looked awesome, but it didn't even compare. Anyway, we were supposed to go on our second day, but due to weather complications, and some other things, we couldn't So we ended up coming back on our second to last day in Mexico. At this point we had already made really good friends with the guy who owned the place, who was nicknamed Rana, (which means frog in Spanish) and his family. The first time we went there we spent the night and partied and were planning to go out to the whales the next day, but as i said earlier that didn't happen. This time, we partied again, but not as crazy, and it was more of a chill, relaxing evening, where we got to watch a beautiful sunset on the ocean. We stayed up late though, telling stories, (both humorous and horrifying) and kicking back around the orange glow of the campfire. The next morning, it was really sunny, and barely windy, which was ideal for whale-watching. So we all got on this speedboat and went out, i’d say at least a mile but i’d probably be wrong. Eventually, off in the distance, we saw a giant whale breaching (which is basically jumping out of the water with it’s head up). It was like nothing i had ever experienced. I thought it was cool to be in Malibu and see a whale way out miles away, but this one was like less than a hundred feet! But this wasn’t even the beginning. eventually we started seeing them swimming all around us. It was insane. Then, Rana said, “Okay this one’s real friendly,” and he smiled and went to the edge of the boat. At first it kind of made your heart skip a beat every time you went to the side of the boat, because it would tip and it felt like it would capsize, but we got over this pretty much as soon as a whale approached us. The first whale was about twice the size of our boat and it kept coming up to the sides and we would pet it. We pet a whale. And this wasn’t sea world or the zoo or anything like that with trained animals, these were completely wild. How does that even happen?! That’s what I was thinking when the whales first got up to our boat. It had the texture of a big wet, kind of like the rubber in the sole of your shoes type thing. If you've ever pet a cat, you know how they kind of rub up against you, well that’s what the whale was doing. You could tell it was getting pleasure, like a cat or dog would when you pet it. Many more whales came to our boat after that. But the most incredible part was when we saw a female whale with her baby. We thought she would be super protective of it and get territorial, but to our surprise, the mother nudged the baby up to the boat so we could pet him better. At that moment, I was convinced that this had to be some kind of dream. But it wasn’t. Then the mom lifted up our boat, dove under the water, came up next to us and spouted it blowhole. It was absolutely mind blowing.
Gray whale breaching
Then came the saddest part of the trip, saying goodbye. It was so weird when we first got back to the U.S. The roads were all paved, there were stores everywhere, and everything was in English. It actually made us pretty sad when we had to come back to reality. Lucky for the Lands, they got to stay an extra week because their break was longer. There are so much more stories and experiences that i didn't get to tell in this paper, and will never be able to. Maybe one day i’ll tell the story in person.
From left to right, Mac, Ethan, Me, and Windy at a beach that we stayed at on our third night
I remember driving through and out of Tijuana. It wasn't really that exciting inside of the city, but when we started getting towards the outer edges we saw some really cool things. Like Oceans, and beaches made of rocks that looked like black shining stones with the sunset. We also saw some huge buildings that looked like they would be really nice, but they were never finished. Then, once we got into the middle of nowhere, things really started to get cool. there were Joshua Trees, and Cacti, and plants that looked like something straight from a Dr. Seuss book. Despite all the awesomeness, I dozed off again. I don’t know what time it was when i woke up, but it was really dark. We ended up bunkering down at this little hotel in El Rosario. Despite the size, it was actually really nice. In fact, was by far the nicest hotel we would come across on that entire trip. When we got to our room, it had nice tile floors, two beds, a tv, and a bathroom with a pretty nice shower. Then we met up with the Lands (Tom, Amy, Mac, and Windy), and decided we were hungry. So we waited for the adults to unpack everything, while Windy, Mac, Ethan and I all hung out in our hotel room. It’s like a tradition of mine whenever I go to a hotel to break in the bed and TV first thing. But when I turned on the TV all we could find were Mexican soap operas. Eventually we found the only american channels they had, which were Disney channel and Nickelodeon. It was pretty amusing to watch “The Princess and the Frog” in Spanish. Then we headed down to a nearby Taqueria, which are little taco stands that they have everywhere in Mexico. When we were walking, there were many barking dogs that looked pretty big and viscous that weren't on leashes, but they kept their distance. Then we got to the taco stand. I can’t even begin to describe to you how good those 5 tacos tasted to me that night, so i’m not even going to try. I don’t know if it was because I was so hungry, or what, But that was literally one of the best experiences (taste wise) in my life.
At this point, I realized that if I try to paint a visual image of our whole trip to you in this paper, it’s going to be a whole book, so i’ll kind of sum it up, and only include the best parts. One thing that was really awesome on that trip was how nice the majority of the people there were. Like when we went to this one tiny little village called San Jose De Gracia, that was totally secluded from the outside world, most of the people who lived there had only been to the nearest town like twice, and we wouldn't even have considered that “town” a “town”. When we got there there was this guy singing, and there was no festival or anything, and for a second Tom stopped to see what was going on, and the guy just looked at him, smiled, kept singing, and encouraged him to join in. And when we got out, all the children surrounded us, and gave us a bag of fresh dates, and tried to talk and play with us even though they spoke only Spanish and were just fascinated with us, and were happy that we were there. But Tom and Amy had an old friend that lived there that they hadn’t seen in like 15 years or something, and as soon as he saw us he started smiling and greeting us and hugging Tom and Amy, and when he came to meet us (the kids) you could tell he really wanted to get to know us, he wasn’t just being polite. Then he invited us in and sat us down at this table made out of some type of straw and told us to wait there. Then he, and his family literally prepared a full on banquet of food for us, and keep in mind, these are probably some of the poorest people on earth, and all this stuff they were giving us was the very best they had. Their water source was literally a stream running down a mountain behind their village. their houses were made out of plastic, bamboo-like straw and anything else they could find. And all they wanted to do to us was give. Some of the most amazing people I have ever met. Oh and, get this, our friend who made us the meal, i thought he was maybe in his early to mid thirties, he was fifty-two. That’s how everyone looked there.
But probably the most memorable part of the trip was yet to come. One of the whole points of us going on this trip, was to go to this bay we had heard lots about called San Ignacio. This bay was unlike any other, I think, in the world. Well, i guess it’s not my opinion, it IS unlike any other bay in the world. The reason being that, for some strange reason, the gray whales that migrate through that area, will swim up to your boat and let you touch them. We saw some videos of it on YouTube, and it looked awesome, but it didn't even compare. Anyway, we were supposed to go on our second day, but due to weather complications, and some other things, we couldn't So we ended up coming back on our second to last day in Mexico. At this point we had already made really good friends with the guy who owned the place, who was nicknamed Rana, (which means frog in Spanish) and his family. The first time we went there we spent the night and partied and were planning to go out to the whales the next day, but as i said earlier that didn't happen. This time, we partied again, but not as crazy, and it was more of a chill, relaxing evening, where we got to watch a beautiful sunset on the ocean. We stayed up late though, telling stories, (both humorous and horrifying) and kicking back around the orange glow of the campfire. The next morning, it was really sunny, and barely windy, which was ideal for whale-watching. So we all got on this speedboat and went out, i’d say at least a mile but i’d probably be wrong. Eventually, off in the distance, we saw a giant whale breaching (which is basically jumping out of the water with it’s head up). It was like nothing i had ever experienced. I thought it was cool to be in Malibu and see a whale way out miles away, but this one was like less than a hundred feet! But this wasn’t even the beginning. eventually we started seeing them swimming all around us. It was insane. Then, Rana said, “Okay this one’s real friendly,” and he smiled and went to the edge of the boat. At first it kind of made your heart skip a beat every time you went to the side of the boat, because it would tip and it felt like it would capsize, but we got over this pretty much as soon as a whale approached us. The first whale was about twice the size of our boat and it kept coming up to the sides and we would pet it. We pet a whale. And this wasn’t sea world or the zoo or anything like that with trained animals, these were completely wild. How does that even happen?! That’s what I was thinking when the whales first got up to our boat. It had the texture of a big wet, kind of like the rubber in the sole of your shoes type thing. If you've ever pet a cat, you know how they kind of rub up against you, well that’s what the whale was doing. You could tell it was getting pleasure, like a cat or dog would when you pet it. Many more whales came to our boat after that. But the most incredible part was when we saw a female whale with her baby. We thought she would be super protective of it and get territorial, but to our surprise, the mother nudged the baby up to the boat so we could pet him better. At that moment, I was convinced that this had to be some kind of dream. But it wasn’t. Then the mom lifted up our boat, dove under the water, came up next to us and spouted it blowhole. It was absolutely mind blowing.
Then came the saddest part of the trip, saying goodbye. It was so weird when we first got back to the U.S. The roads were all paved, there were stores everywhere, and everything was in English. It actually made us pretty sad when we had to come back to reality. Lucky for the Lands, they got to stay an extra week because their break was longer. There are so much more stories and experiences that i didn't get to tell in this paper, and will never be able to. Maybe one day i’ll tell the story in person.